If you're ever wondered what it's like to make art for Blizzard, you should also check out WoW Insider's interview with Jessica Dinh, one of the winners of Blizzard's first Student Art Ccontest. The winners got to spend several months interning at Blizzard and even put some finishing touches on Mists of Pandaria!

5.1 Reputation Changes

While the reputation grinds in Mists of Pandaria try some innovative things like removing reputation from tabards in dungeons, many players were not looking forward to repeating the grind on their alts. In 5.1, each faction now has a special commendation that can be purchased at Revered from quartermasters which unlocks a 100% bonus reputation gain for all characters on the account.

Blizzard confirmed that these commendations work for your characters on the opposite faction as well, and the primary character at Revered also earns double reputation as they work towards Exalted. Initially, one character simply hitting Revered would trigger this bonus reputation gain, but Blizzard felt this wasn't obvious enough, so they added in items. So far only Mists of Pandaria reputations are affected by this system, and no word if gaining Friendship with Tiller NPCs will be affected by this.

Relaunching Wowhead's "Modified By" Tab

With the talent trees removed, ability ranks gone, and numerous spells being heavily changed in Mists of Pandaria, it was time for us to completely redo the Modified By tab on ability pages manually from scratch. We've relaunched this feature this week covering what talents, specializations, class abilities, glyphs, and MoP set bonuses modify a particular player spell. Whether you're curious if a certain talent enhances important spells in your rotation, find an in-game description vague, or aren't sure how a familiar-sounding ability has changed for your dusty alt, this feature should help you out.

Be sure to check out our What's New page for a full list of monthly additions!

Click the cut to read more Battle.net World Championship coverage!

Battle.net World Championship: Raid Challenge

Daxxarri & Zarhym

Day Two of the Battle.net World Championship starts with a bang as two of China’s top raiding guilds, Stars and Supreme Quicksand face off in an exhibition live raid to clear Mogu'shan Vaults with the fastest time. Tune in to the live stream on November 18 at 02:30 CETto witness the competition.

This challenge is sure to test both guilds’ skill and coordination. The competing players will need to plumb the depths of the Mogu'shan Vaults, choosing a raid composition and strategy that strikes a precarious balance between speed and safety. Do they attempt the run with fewer healers than the norm, to edge out their competitors and eke out precious seconds on the clock, but risking a catastrophic wipe? Or do they go with a tried and true strategy, secure in the belief that steady (but not slow!) wins the race?

Each battle presents its own unique challenges, but there are a few that could make or break each guild’s attempt. The Spirit Kings encounter is perhaps the most taxing fight in the Vaults and is sure to be a pivotal moment. We can expect to see both groups play it safe here, because all it may take to secure victory might be succeeding on the first attempt while the other group falters. It’s notable that they will be facing a special version of The Spirit Kings where each foe attacks in the same order, to ensure that the competition remains on an even footing. Meanwhile, both the Gara'jal the Spiritbinder and the Will of the Emperor encounters will require the groups to divide their damage between their main target and lesser minions. If they devote too little to the boss they risk falling behind on the clock, but if they devote too little to minions they risk becoming overwhelmed and suffering a wipe that could cost them time on the clock… and victory.

Meet the Raiders

Our colleagues in China recently had a chance to talk with guild leaders Bluewind of Stars, and Crayon Xiaobu of Supreme Quicksand, who will each lead their incredibly talented teams against one another in the Dungeon Challenge and live raid competitions. We’ve translated the interviews into English for your reading pleasure. You’ll find that, while these leaders hold each other in high esteem, both are prepared to fight for victory this weekend in Shanghai.

Interview with Bluewind of Star

Q. To start, let’s talk about your progress through Mogu’Shan Vaults. Are you satisfied with the results? How are you approaching Heart of Fear and future Mists of Pandaria raid content?A. Actually, we’re not satisfied with the progress we’ve had in Mogu’Shan Vaults, and made a postmortem for this “failure” after we cleared it. It’s a really tough time for us now. Our raid team is composed of veterans and new recruits, as some of the once-hardcore members have become casual. Our team is in the middle of a training period, while their skill level is comparable with that of the veterans, new recruits need more experience. We didn’t consider this as a big issue, while we found out in the end that it really was. This is perhaps why we didn’t achieve the goal we had set for ourselves. Nevertheless, we are working hard for the live raid preparation -- been practicing a lot of Mogu’Shan runs and gave everyone quite some pressure. The new bloods are improving, and our gear is now good enough to meet the new challenge: Heart of Fear. After all, I would say I’m very confident for the next two raid dungeons.

Q. Can you share with us the Stars procedure of learning new boss encounters?A. We always play hard when we confront a new boss, about 8-10 hours a day, which might be a bit shorter than other top guilds, but what we do more is that we sum-up and ponder over. Generally speaking, we’ll always take a quick trial of new bosses on PTR, having a brief impression of the boss. But it’s hard to do well on PTR, so we still need to make a plan that we try to cover everything that could happen in the encounter. This always takes us 2-3 days. Once the boss goes on the live realm, we’ll check our plan at the first moment in the live environment and make some adjustments. We always spend much time discussing, but we always enjoy the procedure.

Q. BWC is at hand! Are you prepared?A. We have done some preparations for the speed runs -- took much time in learning or practicing the encounters. It’s hard to say whether we’re prepared, or whether we can defeat our opponent. As you know, Supreme Quicksand is a top guild that only spent 1 hour, 13 minutes, and 59 seconds finishing 25H Dragon Soul. They are very strong and powerful, but we will do our best to give everyone a wonderful competition.

Q. Are there any effects the BWC competitions will have on your raid progress? Are you looking forward to BWC?A. There are, of course. The BWC event takes place when the Terrace of Endless Spring opens, so there will be some influences. But the BWC invitation is definitely a great honor. It has always been a dream for me, and for other guild members as well, to communicate with the game developers. So we’ll do anything we can to work with Blizzard for the event. I’m really looking forward to BWC. To compete against great opponents, to attend the convention, it will be an amazing experience for all of us.

Interview with Crayon Xiaobu of Supreme Quicksand

Q: Can you give us a brief introduction for your guild? When and how it was built?A: Our guild was called SEED, and was reformed into Supreme Quicksand in December 2005. Some of the former guild mates followed me; together with some new blood we established Supreme Quicksand as it is today. Our goal is to play WoW together without a negative impact on our work and everyday life, so here we are.

Q: In a recent live raid event, you beat out five of the top Chinese guilds in Heroic 25-player Dragon Soul with a clear time of 1 hour, 13 minutes, and 59 seconds, and now you make your way to BWC to face Stars. Do you like to participating in competitions like this?A: Of course we like it. It is really a good chance to show our guild to others, and also to learn from others.

Q: Did you watch Athene’s Dragon Soul Challenge that took place on May 12, where Stars came out the victor? What do you think about your BWC opponent?A: Yes, I have watched that one. Stars has always been a great opponent, and a coach to China guilds as well. We have been watching them since Patch 1.9, and we learned much from their videos. Their strategies have provided helpful information for our learning of the encounters. After the Dragon Soul Challenge, we watched the Stars live raid video again and again, and we practiced about ten times. But even with better gear we didn’t make it to break Stars’ record. So for the Live Raid at BWC, we know we don’t have enough chance to win, but we’ll do our best to bring a wonderful competition to the audience.

Q: In addition to the live raid, the Dungeon Challenge is awaiting you. Are you ready for it?A: When we tried the challenge mode right after hitting level 90, we wiped again and again. It is really challenging like the name suggests, but also fun. After some practice, we did our best to find all the possible ways to shorten the time. Now that more raid dungeons are unlocked, we usually focus on the raid part. But we did some homework both on raids and challenge mode. We practiced and made plans for them.

Comments

Comment by Solthurius

on 2012-11-18T22:59:41-06:00

I don't like the commendations... I would have loved for this to be an overall every single reputation works like this kind of thing. Kind of sad that it's limited to MoP factions currently. It would be nice if all the work I put into grinding Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, etc reps on one toon would mean that my other toons could be completionists and get their reputation recipes etc.

Hey, Quick, you realize you can BUY rep commendations for the various Wrath factions in Dalaran, such as Kirin Tor Commendation Badge? Wrath rep is the easiest to get, especially if your alts have spare JP floating around.

Comment by odiasura

on 2012-11-18T23:53:57-06:00

So basically we grind rep at the current glacial pace on a main character then we get to grind rep on alts for a shorter period of time, but it's still the same 2004-style grind. Thanks for placating us. Happy 8th anniversary, everyone!

Comment by CaoimheX

on 2012-11-19T03:26:45-06:00

So, why would alts want to have rep with all the current factions?

The gear which the current factions sell is still decent, but I am guessing that it will soon become obsolete with patch 5.1 and LFR - I've not yet seen mention of this gear becoming JP gear.

This gear will still needs to be purchased with VP, and it's not the rep that's the limiting factor, it's the VP.

Even if the gear becomes purchasable with JP, has anyone noticed how slowly JP accumulates? It's a boat load of heroic grinding to earn a meagre amount of JP.

To get the necessary VP, there will still need to be a bit of daily grinding, even when exalted with the current factions.

Rewards at exalted rep are pure fluff - mostly mounts and achievements. These are already account-wide.

Basically, even if our alts are exalted, we still have to do the dailies to earn the sparse points to buy the out-dated gear that the current factions sell. Quicker rep grinds are irrelevant, since the other limiting factors are still firmly in place. I believe that the only significance these commendations will make is that gear requiring revered rep will become available sooner

Blizzard would lead our alts to water yet not let them drink.

More thoughts: actually, this is a very nice thing for enchanter alts, who need to be revered with the August Celestials and Shado-Pan to buy the good enchants.

Comment by Ghadanfar

on 2012-11-19T05:16:07-06:00

Why dont they introduce a tabard that its Bound to Account and u can buy it when u hit exhalted on ur main with each faction, so farming rep on ur alt wont consume toooo much time, it will be spank and tank dungeon farm :D

Comment by Muricas

on 2012-11-19T14:55:22-06:00

The "Modified by" link under the section "Relaunching Wowhead's 'Modified By' Tab" links to a spell that appears to contain incorrect information.

The linked spell is Moonfire, yet at the top of the page it says "Database > Spells > Abilities > Warrior" when it is clearly a druid spell.

Comment by Baelabog

on 2012-11-19T19:51:41-06:00

Quicker rep grinds are irrelevant, since the other limiting factors are still firmly in place. I believe that the only significance these commendations will make is that gear requiring revered rep will become available sooner

Blizzard would lead our alts to water yet not let them drink.

I have to disagree with this to a degree. I, and several folks I know, have multiple 90s and are not doing dailies until this rep change happens simply because it does take so long. While I'm sitting on the VP to buy honored pieces from doing daily heroic, scenario and LFR, I don't have the rep to get the VP pieces.

I'd venture to guess that there are other casual-hardcore people out there like us that have the same feelings. As well as the complete casuals who have 1 main and don't really care about alts one way or another and the real hardcores who are gearing alts to the teeth and doing rep dailies every day.

Comment by CaoimheX

on 2012-11-20T02:33:18-06:00

I have to disagree with this to a degree. I, and several folks I know, have multiple 90s and are not doing dailies until this rep change happens simply because it does take so long. While I'm sitting on the VP to buy honored pieces from doing daily heroic, scenario and LFR, I don't have the rep to get the VP pieces.

I understand what you mean, my 4th 90 was in danger of reaching the VP cap before I decided I'd better get some of that rep. On the other hand, my 1st 90 had all the rep (I ground each daily I could every day), but none of the VP. Therein lies part of my point; that rep and VP are both limiting factors. Getting rid of one does not get rid of the other. Even if a 5th or 6th alt had all the rep, VP would still be in its usual short supply. What I'm doing now is simply trying to grind rep to keep pace with the VP, which is an incredibly quick thing to do, about to become even quicker.

Comment by potthegreen

on 2012-11-20T06:45:56-06:00

Hmm nice...

Ok so after a main toons buys the token do all alts start at Rev. Rep? If so then thats cool. I have alot of Panda Factions at Rev with one or two more. And this will greatly Help my Warrior that just pinged a few days ago with weapons (and other alts) by Shortening the Rep grind with Klaxxi.

It means that after your 1st character hits revered, he can buy the token. After using it, that character and all character on the same account gain 100% more rep. So your alt on that account will start where any other character would start (neutral/friendly w.e.), but he will gain 100% more rep while grinding to exalted. Your main who hit revered to be able to buy that will also enjoy 100% more rep on the grind from revered to exalted.

so no. your alts will not start at revered.

Comment by LyssaWoW

on 2012-11-20T12:53:06-06:00

Nope. Still have no inclination to do the daily grind. I have a job already. :s

Comment by david22782

on 2012-11-21T03:59:48-06:00

I wish they would let us use rep tabards again. It was easy and it felt like I was "repping" the people I was earning rep with. They went from one extreme to the other. Now it's all about making sure that ALL of your toons have rep. That's great, but I just play one toon. And, on that one toon I barely have time to earn the rep I need. TABARDS PLOX!

The rep tabards were basicly cheating. That's not how reputation should be earned. They fixed a broken system. Reputation in wow has always been more difficult to gain than just dungeon farming.

Comment by SoulflameTB

on 2012-12-03T00:23:08-06:00

I wish they would let us use rep tabards again. It was easy and it felt like I was "repping" the people I was earning rep with. They went from one extreme to the other. Now it's all about making sure that ALL of your toons have rep. That's great, but I just play one toon. And, on that one toon I barely have time to earn the rep I need. TABARDS PLOX!

The rep tabards were basicly cheating. That's not how reputation should be earned. They fixed a broken system. Reputation in wow has always been more difficult to gain than just dungeon farming.

They didn't fix anything, they made optional content mandatory for progression to stretch out the play time required to consume content in order to artificially increase the shelf-life of limited content. In short, the added some extra water to the soup and called it more food.

Different reputations were gathered in different ways, and some had multiple ways to gather, but gaining reputation from instances has been around since early on. Tabards didn't add the concept of running dungeons to get rep, they just let you choose which rep you wanted to earn from each dungeon. Raid reputation from running specific raids dates back to Vanilla and continued on. Dungeon reputation dates back to at least BC. Pretending that this was somehow a new 'problem' or something introduced in Cata or Wrath is just silly.

The only problem - new or old - inherent in the system is the conflict between running specific instances for specific rep and Blizzard's insistence on making people run randoms, not specifics, using the dungeon tools. This problem was solved perfectly by tabards. The fact that Blizzard got lazy in their design and decided to gate everything - and I do mean everything - behind one method of gaining rep (dailies) to fix the 'problem' of people running only one type of content (dungeons) to gain rep does not mean they somehow "fixed a broken system." They just moved the supposed problem from one place to another (and a less popular type of content at that).

I don't know why people are pretending that dailies - or specifically rep dailies - are some brilliant new feature of MoP that never existed before. There have been dailies in every expansion so far and the vast majority of them granted rep with some faction or another. Again, the only thing that MoP changed is how mandatory the reputation became; i.e. which rewards were gated behind rep and how many options there are to earn it (currently: 1).

In this expansion we have fewer options and more mandates than ever before, and that is what the "I hate dailies" crowd is complaining about, not the fact that dailies exist, but that the gating has made them a more or less necessary part of progressing a character at end game, because even if the RNG gods smile upon you and you get your random heroics to drop gear you need (and you win it), your character will never ever reach anywhere near the character power that you gain by grinding out dailies. They haven't fixed the problem of "one-stop shopping" as they claimed, they simply moved the shop to a far less convenient location and called it a solution.

Comment by Martyx

on 2012-12-04T06:22:14-06:00

So on my main I have revered with Klaxxi, Tillers and Golden Lotus (yes yes I'm slow! :-p)

I have purchased the Commendations and 'consumed' them - fab! But purely for testing purposes I bought another one and consumed it again... it would seem that WoW has no knowledge that I have done this.

Other than actually doing the dailies (seeing the +bonus rep in the chat window) I don't see anything.

Can we have a notification or indication we have purchased these? Like "Already known" on recipes.On our alts it would also be useful for the factions with bonus rep to be highlighted in a different colour maybe?